I have been using a coffee mug lately (it was a gift). What I don't like is the clanking as the brush hits the sides of the mug as I try to load it. Large pucks don't fit either. Used to have a Tabac bowl that I liked but some pucks were still pretty tight in it.

Our hard water militates against puck-in-mug shaving. So I mostly use mugs, coffee or otherwise, purely for soaking the brush in preparation for a hand-lathered cream or face-lathered stick shave. My shaving mugs are fine in the closet but would look handsome in a shave den. I dream of a writing shack out back, complete with a plumbed men's.

Pyewacket decided to investigate the bathroom counter this A.M. I hear the familiar clamour of his studied mayhem and got up to investigate. I watched my new mug fly off the counter and land- intact in his litter tray. Then the little troublemaker climbed into his (freshly cleaned) litter tray and went back to sleep.
I am listening to Alan Watts on the radio and brewing some French Roast.

Both I and my wife have a true gift of being able to break any glass vessel that comes into our hands, or even in close proximity. It's only a matter of time until I break my scuttles. Now you see why I cherish my amazing hardwood lather bowl (a big ashtray which I found in my son in law's garage and generously given to me a few years ago).

The only answer I would have had for forty years would have been "Of course, why not?" That's more or less the same size as the very first shave puck holding device that I ever had, an Apothecary Mug, with the funny knob handle. It was part of a set with my first brush, about 50 years ago, and as anyone who ever has a tile floor knows, anything ceramic or glass can't fall to that part with a rug on it to offer human comfort on a winter morning. They always land in between the floor coverings.

I went through six or eight mugs from 1968 to 1990 or so, when my Sunday shaves became the only ones that I used "real" lather for. It was only quite recently (four - five years) that I discovered that there were various new receptacles for pucks of soap. I was really surprised at the time.